The Twins in Different Places
by Songcrystal
Summary: When two cases intertwine, the gang from the Jeffersonian will have to deal with two new FBI agents whose temporary addition to the team will change them all.
1. Enter Barnett and Nolan

Disclaimer: If the characters from "Bones" were mine, I would not be a struggling writer and they would all be living happily ever after with me on a beach in Maui. ;D However, Grady and Mia are mine, and you can't have them. So there!

Synopsis: When two cases intertwine, the team from the Jeffersonian will have to deal with two new FBI agents whose temporary addition to the team will change them all. As an aside, this story takes place right after "The Woman in the Sand" but proceeds into AU territory from there.

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"So, what have we got this time?" Mia Barnett put one hand on her hip and studied the file in her other. Her long, curly dark hair fell forward to cover her face as she squinted her eyes at the report. "Father and daughter reported dead, wife missing. What's that got to do with the FBI?"

Her partner, Agent Grady Nolan, grinned at her. Lounging on the sofa in his office, his blond hair shaggy and uncombed, his blue eyes twinkling, he looked like a beach bum without the beach. "Well, babe, here's the twist: daughter's not dead. And it's not just the mother who's missing, it's the daughter's twin sister. Oh, and the girls happen to be the Pierce twins."

"What, not those two fifteen-year-olds who just had that breakout hit on the radio?"

"One and the same. Molly is in a coma, Monica's missing."

"Wow. And since Monica is a minor and may have been kidnapped, this would fall under our jurisdiction anyway, huh?"

"Nailed it in one. Also, I sort of have a connection to the doctor who's in charge of her case."

"Really?" Mia arched a brow, amused. Nolan had connections everywhere. "Who is it this time?"

"Lisa Cuddy, old buddy of mine from med school. This is, of course, back when I thought I wanted to be a doctor. She's Head of Medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro. Not only is she nearby, she also has diagnostics wonder-boy Gregory House on her staff. She said she'd get him to take a look at our girl, see if he can wake her up."

Mia smiled. "Sounds good. Give me some more details on the case."

Nolan closed his eyes, and Mia knew he was pulling up the file in his head. "At 8:04 last Friday night, someone entered the Pierce residence—either with a key or with professional tools—and surprised Molly Pierce as she was exiting the bathroom. Our attacker knocked her unconscious by thwacking her against the wall. The sound presumably alerted her father, who came to check on her. The murderer used chloroform to knock him out, then strangled him to death against the same wall and dropped his body on top of that of his daughter.

"The attacker then either kidnapped or killed the wife. At 9:13, Monica made a phone call to her home, telling her parents that she was at a club in New York City. Investigators have been searching for her, but they haven't found any trace of her. There's no indication that she knew what had happened to her family."

Nolan took a breath. "So it's unlikely—but possible—that Monica was responsible for the murder. It seems more likely that the wife killed her husband and tried to kill her daughter, then took off."

"Why would she do that? And why try and kill one daughter and not the other? And why would she—"

Chuckling, Nolan waved his hand like a conductor directing an orchestra. "And off she goes, positing scenarios one after the other. If we waited for you to come up with all the ideas you're going to, we'd be here all night."

"So, let's get going," Mia cocked her head to one side and studied him with a lopsided grin. " It's my turn to drive, by the way."

Nolan returned her expression. "Sure is. Too bad you don't have the keys." He dangled them lazily from his fingers, then shot up and feinted to the side as she pounced at him. She missed, and went headfirst into the fluffy couch pillows. Laughing, he tucked the keys—and his hand—safely in his pocket and strolled out, whistling to tune out the sound of her swear words.

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Notes: Don't worry, you will get to see Booth, Bones, and the squints very shortly! However, this story will be OC-centric and Hodgela-centric, with healthy doses of Booth, Brennan, Zach, and Cam action on the side. Oh, and for those of you who noticed, there was a cross-over with House MD which I may or may not expand upon later in the story. It won't be too major a cross-over, though. Reviews are appreciated, nice reviews are even better, but whether you like this story or not, you're going to get another chapter of it, and soon. Here's hoping you're looking forward to it!


	2. The Girl Without A Name

**Disclaimer: If the characters from "Bones" were mine, I wouldn't have to get through college and wake up to go to classes every morning. Ah, the good life!**

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It was a typical day of autumn in Washington D.C. Cool air and bright sunshine stirred around her as Angela Montenegro stood outside of the door to the Jeffersonian Institute, lost in thought. She'd had a great weekend, exploring a local art show and working on her own set of fall landscapes. It had been simple and fun. Once she walked through that door into the workplace, her life would be neither.

Even after over a year of working at the Institute, she still woke up some mornings wondering what in the world she was doing there. She was an artist. She painted, sketched, and occasionally even sculpted images of the living world. At work, she put faces on dead people and tried to draw a picture of how they came to be that way. She got to work with brilliant scientists and good people every day. She constantly counted her lucky stars at the opportunity she'd been given, a chance for a steady-paying job that didn't keep her away from her art.

So why was she so afraid of going in there?

Sighing, she ran a hand through her hair. She knew the answer to that one; she just didn't want to think about it. It had been this way for the last twelve days. Twelve long days since her date with Jack Hodgins, entomologist, billionaire, conspiracy theorist—and coworker.

It wasn't that the date hadn't been a good. It had. In fact, it had been the best date she'd had in years. Which was precisely the problem. Hodgins was not a good long-term prospect. Actually, he was a disaster waiting to happen. He was paranoid, nervous, had trouble controlling his anger, and he was a daredevil. He had gone diving for bones with a murderer at his air pump, had followed Booth on a stakeout. One of these days he was going to get himself killed and she didn't want to be around to watch. She'd already had to examine one boyfriend's bones.

"Angela? Coming out or going in?"

And there he was. Adorable blue eyes, auburn hair in unruly ringlets, and that smile that still had the power to melt the heart she'd steeled against his charms. He looked as if he wanted to step closer to her, but thought the better of it and held the door open for her. She walked in without saying a word.

Dr. Temperance Brennan, the resident forensic anthropologist and Angela's best friend, was already leaning over the examining table peering at a set of skeletal remains. These had a familiar smell to them that Angela couldn't place for a moment. Then she identified it. The bones reeked of garbage. Hodgins clapped his hands together with glee.

"Tell me you have particulates, please?" he asked, practically begging.

"Waiting for you with Zach. Ange, we've got a female, approximately twelve to eighteen years old, died about a week ago. Think you can give me a face?"

She nodded. "I'll see what I can do." She stopped. "Bren?"

"Yes?"

Angela debated the wisdom of bringing the subject up, then simply blurted it out. "You never told me how your trip was."

"Trip—what? Oh, you mean Las Vegas?" Brennan had spent the last three days in Nevada with her FBI partner, Agent Seeley Booth, solving a case. Booth was one of the hottest male specimens Angela had ever seen, and he and Brennan had been dancing around each other for nearly a year now. Despite her own misgivings about dating coworkers who tended to court danger, she wanted badly to see her best friend happy with their resident G-man.

"It was good," Brennan was saying. "I was Roxy and he was Tony and," here she slipped into a flirty accent, "we was engaged ta be engaged, ya know?" She giggled, and Angela had to fight back her surprise. This was a side of Brennan that Angela rarely heard, a playful side.

She went on. "But on the way back, I kept getting this feeling that his mind was on something else."

"Dr. Brennan, Ms. Montenegro—I'm glad you two are so ahead on this case that you've found time to chat." In strolled Camille Saroyan, forensic pathologist and now boss of the Jeffersonian's crime-solving team. "Anything I can work on?"

Brennan pointed. "Some bits of skin and hair that you might be able to get something out of. Everything else is in Hodgins' hands right now."

"I'll get to work on these. And you two, I expect, will be getting back to your work?" It wasn't a question.

Taking a seat and pulling her sketchbook out of her bag, Angela thought about what Brennan had said. She knew what Booth had been thinking about. It was something she and everyone else at the Jeffersonian except Brennan and Zach (who was oblivious) had known for a while: Booth was dating Camille. There was a constant, gnawing guilt in the pit of her stomach that she was keeping the information from her friend. But she didn't want to be the one to tell her. Whether or not Brennan was willing to admit it, Booth meant a lot to her and seeing him with Cam, who was new and only a tentative friend at best, was going to hurt. In some ways, Brennan was just the same as Angela. Because Booth meant so much to her, and because he worked with her and had a perilous profession, she kept him at a distance to keep herself safe. But that was a depressing line of thinking that she didn't want to dwell on. So she turned her thoughts away from the living and began the path to giving a dead girl back her identity.

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**Notes: Ah, there are the familiar characters we know and love—in a purely, nonromantic, happy-to-be-reviewed kind of way. So, if you'd like to review, I'd love to hear from you! This is my first story here, so I'm not sure if you guys like it or not.**


	3. Lives Intertwine

**Disclaimer: If the characters from "Bones" were mine, I wouldn't have to get through college and wake up to go to classes every morning. Ah, the good life!**

_Author's Note: Please review, you guys! Even if you don't like the story, I want to know about it, so I change whatever it is I'm doing wrong. And if you do like it, please don't be afraid to speak up. I'd love to hear from you!_

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"And how long have you known the girls?" Mia questioned the boy. Eighteen-year old Donald Emmett was the longtime boyfriend of Monica Pierce, a tough former street kid she'd met while they were performing together at a karaoke bar. After hearing her sing, he'd taken her and her sister out riding in a stolen convertible. Now, the punk in the tight jeans and the black leather jacket was swiping at his drenched eyes and red nose and sniffling like a toddler.

"T-two years. I just c-can't believe this happened. Molly and Monica are gonna be so freaked. I mean, they just loved their dad."

"Did you see them together with their parents often?"

"Yeah, yeah. They invited me to all the holidays and shi—stuff, like. They were all so close, you know?"

"I do." Actually, she didn't know a thing about it. She had been raised by her alcoholic mother and had taken off as soon as she'd gotten the letter with the scholarship to NYU. She hadn't been back since. It was Nolan who had the big, emotional family. "And I know it can be tough looking at that kind of thing from the outside. Were you ever jealous of them?"

"Me? No way, lady. They took me in, like, and made me part of their family. You think I did something like this? No, just…no, no. Never."

"It wouldn't fit, would it?" she mused softly. "If you'd wanted Monica for herself, you wouldn't have needed to kill her family. If you wanted to kill her family, the mother and one daughter wouldn't be missing. Are you sure you don't have any idea where Monica or her mother might be?"

"No. I wish I did. I'm so scared. What's gonna happen if Molly doesn't wake up? What if she does? What's she gonna do if she loses her sister? What's Monica gonna do if she turns up and then Molly dies? Those two were…they were twins, lady. Part of each other."

"Yeah." Mia stopped her recorder. "Donny, do you have any idea who would have wanted to do this to Monica and Molly?"

"No! I mean, they were so nice, everybody loved them. Except…"

"Every little thing helps, Donny."

"Well, Monica said there was this guy who was harassing her at work—you know, while she was doing the recording with Molly. Only she didn't say who. And Molly, she was real scared about this guy, scared for her sister, y'know. But neither of them would tell me who it was." He wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

Mia put a hand on his shoulder. "Donny, you know I have to ask it: where were you the night that Molly and her parents were attacked?"

"Out drinking. I had a bottle I'd brought with me from home in my backpack. Sat at Ralph's Deli and let Ralphie baby-sit me until I was sober enough to walk home. I was a little upset and worried for Monica and I wanted to sit and think out what I could do to help. Here, I'll get you the address."

As he moved to get a pen and paper from the desk in the corner of his living room, Mia considered his response. There was something he was hiding from her, but she couldn't put her finger on what just yet. He came back with two lines scribbled on a post-it note. "I don't have any more questions for you right now," Mia said, "but you stick around. Don't go out of town for a while, and be available if I need to talk to you."

"Where would I go? I'll be at the hospital every day. Just…promise me you'll find Monica for me. Please."

"We'll do our best." She tossed the recorder in her purse and strode out the front door of Emmett's apartment to where Nolan was waiting for her. "How'd your interview go?" she asked.

"Decently enough. Juan Gomez is a slime ball."

"Aren't all agent-slash-managers supposed to be?"

"Right." Nolan pressed the button for the elevator. "But he gave us another name. Hannah Carlin—singing sensation, and one of the fiercest rivals of the Pierce twins."

"Daughter of record producer Robbie Carlin, right? So maybe two suspects. Did Robbie want the girls out of the way to make more room for his kid in the spotlight?"

"Doesn't make sense. Why kill the father and then not check to make sure the daughter was dead? And why kidnap the mother? I still say Veronica Pierce remains at the top of our short list. Especially since Gomez appears to be alibied for the night in question. He was at a party."

"But why would she kill her husband? And why try to kill one daughter and not the other? From all accounts, Ronnie Pierce loved both of her daughters."

"All accounts don't tell us much, Mia. Facts tell us that when murder of a husband or wife occurs, the spouse is **always** the most likely suspect."

"It doesn't fit."

"So what else is new? Nothing in this case fits yet. And what about that other daughter? How do we know she wasn't behind it? Maybe she wanted her sister out of the way, and the parents just happened to get in the middle of it."

"All you can do is harp on the family, you with your own perfect set. Keep an open mind."

"Always do."

As they climbed into his car and drove out of the garage, Nolan's phone began to ring. "Grab that for me, babe?" he asked. Mia rolled her eyes. He called every female over twelve 'babe' and expected them to do whatever he asked because he was just so darn cute. Most of the time they did. She chucked the phone into his lap, listening to the tones of Mozart or Bach or Beethoven. An odd choice for a man who looked like Nolan did, but nothing about Nolan was ever boring.

Fumbling for the phone and screeching to a halt before turning out into the busy city streets, Nolan swore and threw the phone back at Mia. Rolling her eyes, she picked it up. "Agent Nolan's phone, Agent Barnett speaking," she sang out cheerily.

"Barnett? This is Cullen."

"Sir!" It wasn't unheard of for the deputy director of the FBI to call his agents, but Mia herself had only spoken to him a handful of times in the eight years she'd been on the force. "How can I help you, sir?"

"You and Nolan are going to catch the next plane to D.C. and head out to the Jeffersonian Institute. They've found Monica Pierce's body."

"They have? What's it doing in D.C.?"

"The corpse was significantly decomposed. The Jeffersonian has a team of scientists who are geniuses at identifying bodies in that condition. You'll be working with Agent Booth, our liaison at the Institute. I want you three to cooperate, understand? I have the highest respect for Booth, and his track record since partnering with Dr. Brennan—that's the Jeffersonian's resident prodigy—is damn solid."

"I'm not in it for the glory, sir, and neither is Nolan. We're just working to catch the bad guys."

"Glad to hear it, since I'll be holding you to it. I expect you at the Institute by tomorrow morning."

"Will do, sir." He hung up. Brennan. Where had she heard that name before? Mia slipped the phone into Nolan's coat pocket, trying not to think about the very nice body underneath. He glanced down at her hand, and smiled, knowing what she was thinking about. They had had a physical relationship at the very beginning of their partnership, three years back. It hadn't worked out, and they'd almost split up, but they'd gotten past it because neither had ever had such a good partner before and they didn't want to wreck the friendship they'd once had. So they'd moved on.

Or at least, Mia pretended she had moved on. She'd dated, as had Nolan, but for as long as they had been partners they hadn't had any serious relationships. Mia wasn't ready to admit she wasn't over him, but she didn't pine for him like some schoolgirl, so if she hadn't found someone better yet, that was as good an excuse as any.

"Hello? Earth to Barnett, calling Barnett. Are you there, Barnett?" He flicked her shoulder. When she turned to glare at him, he asked. "What happened on that phone call? And what's this about not being in it for the glory?"

"Ah, that. Well, did you want to tell Director Cullen you're a glory hound? Because I could call him back, you know."

"Cullen?" His face mirrored the shock he felt. "What the hell was Cullen calling us about?"

She sobered. "They've found Monica Pierce's remains. They couldn't ID at first, so they shipped her out to the Jeffersonian in D.C. Cullen wants us to follow and work with the Institute's FBI liaison, Booth, and his squints."

"Seeley Booth?" Nolan let out a low, impressed whistle. "You haven't heard, Barnett. This is the guy who cracked the Davis and Lynch case."

"Senator Paula Davis and Warren Lynch?" That was impressive. The senator and the businessman had been in a train wreck, and one had been killed while the other was in a permanent coma. Hopefully unlike the one Molly Pierce was in.

"One and the same. I've asked around, and the other guys say he's the real deal. Former army sniper came back home and wanted to make a difference fighting crime. He and his lady scientist, Dr. Brennan, are the FBI's star students lately."

And then it came to her. "Temperance Brennan? The author? This is a small world. I met her once at a book signing. She's a fascinating woman, but I get the feeling she doesn't like me much."

"Aw, babe, why not? Everybody likes you."

"She hates psychology."

"That would explain it." Mia was a licensed psychologist and sometime forensic profiler who studied the human mind the way an artist studied a painting. And she understood it the same way, emotionally and instinctively. Nolan was aware that it had been Mia who had kept their partnership from crumbling to pieces when their relationship had. She'd been rational, objective, and compassionate about it. And he'd still never quite gotten over her.

"So, D.C. We should probably call the airport and see what we can do. And we should get some pizza before we go. LaGuardia cafeteria food does not a New York experience make."

Nolan grinned. "You lived here, babe. Tell me where to go."

Mia leaned back, stretched. "Make a left up ahead. I know a little place that will be just perfect."

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